Interview Claire Bocardo

by

Kathye Quick

Claire Bocardo’s book Maybe Later, Love is a story to which many of us can relate. At some point in our lives, we find that we have family and friends of good intentions who think they know what’s best for us.

It’s no different for Dorrie Greene, newly widowed at age 55, who finds herself at a crossroad in her life. Helping her choose which direction to go are a cast of characters that will surely make you smile. Her son thinks she belongs in a rocking chair, her daughter wants her to take over the family store she had never been allowed to run, and her best friend, Charmaine, recently returned from a UFO hunt in Peru, plunges her into the New Age movement to “find herself.” Toss in an accountant who wants to marry Dorrie, and you have a wonderful story of a women trying to find herself with some twists and turns along the way.

Claire has used some “moments” in her own life to craft this warm and often humorous story. Let’s see if we can get her to tell us about them.

Claire, introduce yourself to our guests. Tell us a little about yourself and your family.

I grew up in Washington State, where my dad owned three jewelry stores—hence Dorrie’s business—went to college and married in California, and moved to the Dallas area in 1963. (As the local transplants say, “I got here as soon as I could!”) I fell into a newspaper writing job in my late 30’s and later became the editor; then I moved to a corporate job editing technical manuals. In 1997, my husband died and I moved up into the Red River Valley, where I live on a 14-acre hill of virgin prairie.

When did you know that you wanted to write and share your stories with readers?

Until I took that newspaper job, I assumed that anyone who can talk can write. Editing took care of that illusion. After I sold a personal-experience article to McCall’s Magazine and then a short story to a teen magazine, I thought, I can do this! So I went back to college to complete my English major and specialized in creative writing. I started with short stories and then realized that I’m better suited to writing novels. A short story is about a single incident; a novel gives the source and outcome of that incident, and I’ve always been interested in the “why.”

You mentioned to me that Maybe Later, Love grew out of a dream you had one night. Care to share it with the rest of us?

First, let me quote the best piece of advice about writing I’ve ever had, because it encouraged me to write a story that I thought had no market whatever. It was, “Write the book you want to read, because the chances are that only you will ever read it.” (That sounds cynical, but think about it: if you don’t want to read it, why would anybody else?) I woke one morning from a dream about a frazzled, sleepy, gray-haired woman staring into her bathroom mirror and saying ironically, “So I am the walrus. Coo coo ca-choo!” The image intrigued me; I wanted to know who she was and what prompted the remark, and the only way to find out was to write her story.

To help Dorrie with her New Age experiences, you joined the Parapsychology Society. What was the most fascinating thing you learned about life there and how did it help your writing?

I’ve been interested in psychic and occult matters all my life, so I’d been reading about them for years. But if I were to set a story in that milieu, I had to know what its people are like. I discovered what Dorrie learns at the psychic fair: they’re just like any other group of talented people—only their talent is unusual. Over that year, I also learned a lot about trusting my own intuition and came to a couple of important conclusions: that these things are, indeed, possible (so when they happen, you need not fear for your sanity), and that it’s wise to be critical. It’s much too easy to fool yourself, and if you escape that, there are a lot of charlatans who’d be happy to do it for you.

Are Dorrie’s feminist daughter and traditional son based on anyone in your family?

None of my characters are ever a direct portrait of anyone I’ve known; they just have individual characteristics I’ve seen. I begin with one or two of those and then let the character reveal him- or herself to me as the story unfolds. But in a sense, they are all parts of the imagination that created them, and thus aspects of myself.

Charmaine Stubbs, Dorrie’s best friend, is a fascinating character. Do you think she’ll have her own book someday?

Somebody once asked me to write Charmaine’s book, and I told her I can’t; Charmaine has solved all her major conflicts, and without conflict, there’s no story. But I do love Charmaine; she delights me.

How do you construct your novels? Do you create characters and give them an adventure, or does the adventure you envision cerate your characters?

Each of my novels has begun with a character in a trying situation. First I have to figure out how she got into that trouble, so the original starting point—the “situation”—generally winds up about a quarter of the way into the book. The rest of the story is watching her resolve it. I started out trying to plot novels before I wrote them, but the outline was wrecked before the third chapter. Now I let my characters tell me their story.

If you could be a character in anyone’s book, who would you be? Or are your characters actually parts of you and your experiences?

All that a writer has to work with is what’s between her ears: facts, experiences, memories, and imagination, plus whatever she plugs in by way of research. So all my characters (and, I think, all of any writer’s characters) come out of my head and represent my understanding of How Things Work. If not, I couldn’t empathize with them well enough to make them seem real. Even when I’ve begun with a character I didn’t much like or respect, by the time the book is done I’ve understood why they acted the way they did. Villains act out of ignorance and fear; only love is heroic.

How long have you been writing and what advice can you give to those who are just starting down the path to publication?

I’ve been writing fiction for about 25 years, and it took the first half of that to get published. My advice to aspiring writers is, first learn the basic tools: the rules of grammar and composition, usage, and rhetoric; story structure; letting your characters reveal themselves by their words and actions instead of describing them to the reader; listening to the ways people talk to develop an ear for dialogue. Then write what you really care about—what interests you—without worrying about who’s going to publish it. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; if it’s dreadful, you can fix it or toss it, but at least you’ve given yourself the experience of writing it. Finally, be patient. Almost nobody sells their first novel, and many who do, shouldn’t. Write for the love of writing, and eventually you’ll get your chance at publication.

What do you have in store for your fans in the future?

Maybe Later, Love is the first of four books under contract to Wings ePress; the others will come out at about three-month intervals through the coming year. Sweet Nothings, which will be released in November, is about a woman in midlife crisis who keeps her sanity by writing comic verse. It’s closer to a “real romance” than the others, but its main thrust is about the woman figuring out who she is and what of it. Lovers and Friends, scheduled for February, is about two fiftyish woman, best friends since junior high school, who try to set each other up with husbands with comical results. And Becoming Sarah, coming next June, is about a 35-year-old virgin living under her father’s heavy thumb who kicks over the traces to become her own woman.

Any final words of wisdom?

When I was younger, I made an annoying habit of giving excellent advice to people who neither needed nor desired it. Now my only wisdom is, “Don’t worry. Be happy!”